Travel for Academic Credit

In 1935, East Carolina Teachers College obtained the services of Paul T. Ricks as director of a new travel course designed to meet the needs of travel-hungry students. For the initial tour, more than a hundred students filled a large bus and several touring cars. The tours provided three hours of credit in geography, American literature, and history, and satisfied requirements for college electives or renewal credits for teacher certification. So great was the demand for these economical study-vacations that three separate three-week tours were operated the first summer and an expanded schedule of tours was arranged until the restrictions of World War II brought them to an end.